Nat Hentoff: He always had this quality of, I would call it, luminescence. It's a thoughtful, luminous kind of playing. But what is most striking about Jim is that he keeps evolving. He keeps challenging himself. So he's continually recording and playing with different kinds of instrumentation. And that is a characteristic that makes his music always acutely contemporary.

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This Jazz Moment on guitarist Jim Hall was created by the National Endowment for the Arts